---
title: If a single word comes out of your mouth, all your labour is vain.’ — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: If a single word comes out of your mouth, all your labour is vain.’ Who acts: single word, labour. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Six Swans, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/4/46/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Yellow Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/) / [The Six Swans](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/4/) / 46

# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Six Swans, sentence 46

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
If a single word comes out of your mouth, all your labour is vain.’

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** single word, labour · **What happens:** come out, be · **To what, where:** mouth

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Six Swans. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (single word, labour), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher.** This tree is Mova's own parse (the `en` model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg640:4:46
# text = If a single word comes out of your mouth, all your labour is vain.’
1	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	5	mark	_	_
2	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	single	single	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	word	word	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	comes	come	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	15	advcl	_	_
6	out	out	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
7	of	of	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	mouth	mouth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
11	all	all	DET	PDT	PronType=Tot	13	det:predet	_	_
12	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	nmod:poss	_	_
13	labour	labour	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nsubj	_	_
14	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	15	cop	_	_
15	vain	vain	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	15	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	15	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **come out** *a condition, not said to happen* | present | a single word | your mouth |  |  |  |  | vn become-109.1 «NP V ADJ»: agent=Patient mouth=Result |
| 2 | **is** | present | your labour |  |  |  |  | vain *property* | tree rules |

<!-- .note -->
One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

<!-- div src -->

**Text:** «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 640 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 45](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/4/45/)
- next →: [sentence 47](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/4/47/)
- ↑ back to [The Six Swans](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/4/)